Semua Bab I Searched the World for You: Bab 21 - Bab 30

Quentin couldn't make out what Zoe said, and he had no patience to listen.He watched her struggle grow weaker, and her eyes began to lose focus. The guilt and grief weighing on him seemed to fade.Without enough air, Zoe's mind slowly went blank.Her vision blurred, dark spots spread across it, and a faint buzzing was all she could hear.Just as she thought she would die, her family, who had followed her, burst into the room.Zack Young grabbed Quentin by the collar and dragged him away. Once his sister was safe, he punched Quentin.Quentin's eyes were wild with rage. He forgot their friendship and fought back.Neither man gave way. Every punch landed hard."Quentin Hale, you cheated on your wife, took advantage of my sister, and ruined her reputation! What gives you the right to lay a hand on her?""I ruined her? Zack, get this straight. Your sister shamelessly seduced me! She threw herself at me. I gave her money, but that wasn't enough. She insisted on telling my wife. Why shouldn

Zoe had no choice but to follow her brother downstairs. She kept looking back and called 911 with trembling hands.When they got home, her family confined her to her room again.This time, they took turns watching her around the clock and confiscated her phone.With no way to contact anyone outside, she had no idea how Quentin was doing.Every day, her family tried to talk sense into her.Zoe ignored every word.The days passed with her shut in her bedroom until she nearly lost track of time.She could barely eat or sleep. She lost weight and looked exhausted.One evening, her mother brought her dinner as usual: chicken soup she spent the afternoon making.The smell made Zoe start vomiting.Her mother watched her retch and remembered that her period was late. Her face went pale.She set down the soup, rushed out to buy a pregnancy test, and pushed it into Zoe's hand before sending her to the bathroom.Two lines appeared on the test. When her father came home and learned the news, he

"When you were six, your father's first love came back from abroad. He promised me they were only friends, but he slept with her behind my back. “She became pregnant, and to push me out of the way, she was willing to lose the baby and accuse me of causing the miscarriage."The accusation was so flimsy. A look at the security footage would have cleared my name, but your father believed her without question. “That was when I gave up on him and decided to return to my own world. Before I left, I asked if you wanted to come with me. “But you adored the older boy next door and refused to leave him. I used the points I had left to get you a necklace that could bring you across worlds."When I got home, I learned that my father never stopped looking for me during the nine years I was gone. He died just a week before I returned. I never got to see him again. “All I could do was cry at his grave. I regretted staying away so long. I kept thinking that if I hadn't clung to Hugh, I could have

Thirty days after Lauren disappeared, there was still no trace of her.Just as she promised, she vanished completely.Quentin searched nearly every corner of Kingsford and found nothing.Whenever he fell asleep, terrifying nightmares took hold of him.In his dreams, he saw Lauren again, but her gaze was colder than ice.He cried, knelt to apologize, and begged her forgiveness. She never responded.However hard he chased her, she stayed just ahead of him, close enough to see but impossible to touch.The dream was like an endless maze that trapped him in place.All he could do was wait to wake up.But when he opened his eyes and saw their empty home, another kind of pain struck him.For Quentin, night and day brought different kinds of torment.He couldn't fight either one. He could only sink deeper into them.He shut himself in his room. As the days passed, he began to lose track of what was a dream and what was real. He was rarely fully aware of either.Then, one morning, the doorbe

The two families sat across from each other in the dim room, their faces grim.The silence in the living room grew unbearable.At last, Zoe found the courage to speak."I... I'm pregnant!"Her words shattered the stillness.Quentin's parents turned to her, stunned.Quentin shot to his feet.Disbelief filled his sharp gaze."Impossible!"Zack bristled at his immediate denial and clenched his fists."How is it impossible? You're the only boyfriend my sister's ever had. She's two months pregnant, and the baby is yours. Are you still going to deny it?"Quentin's sluggish mind raced as he counted backward.Two months?He counted back to mid-November.No, that made even less sense.He used protection every time. The baby couldn't be his.Certain he worked it out, Quentin looked at them coldly."If she's two months pregnant, the baby isn't mine! Who knows how many other men your sister's been sleeping with?"Zack raised a fist at the insult, but Zoe grabbed him before he could strike.She loo